We just got our flight tickets confirmed for our month-long visit to the U.S. in Sept/Oct. Jason will be on business and work conference in Palo Alto, New Jersey and Boston (9/16-10/19) and Susan will arrive a week earlier (9/9) to greet the arrival of her niece, Avery.
Flight tickets have insanely gone up! The cheapest United Airlines round trip Shanghai-SF ticket for one person is $1350 USD (and this is low season too!) Six years ago when Susan came to Shanghai, they were in the $700-800 USD range! Fortunately, we paid altogether only $35 USD for both our flights (saved over $3000 USD!) Jason’s company (Roche) covered his flights since he’ll be doing mostly work-related business. Susan redeemed her tickets using the miles she accumulated over the past few years, paying only $35 USD in taxes and fees.
The timing couldn’t have been any better because all the house purchase expenses (30% down payment, legal fees, zhuang xiu, property tax, furnishing) pretty much depleted our bank accounts, that in addition to Susan quitting her job at SMIC School. Susan’s sister, Iris, is expecting their first baby (Avery Tin) mid-September, the first in the Wu family. On top of that, Susan needs to leave the country (China) for a minimum of 30 days for tax purposes. (Foreigners in China will be taxed heavily on all income sources whether in China or abroad if they lived in China for 5 years without a 30+ consecutive days exit break.) The last time Susan was out of the country for 30+ days was more than four years ago. Since Jason will have to do the same thing two years later, they might as well reset the clock together so that it’ll be easier to remember the next time they have to exit the country. We were wondering how he’d be able to leave the country for an entire month without cutting off our only income source.
It just so happens that Roche has a global conference for all the project leaders in Palo Alto the week after Avery is due! (Susan’s sister lives near Palo Alto!) There’s also another conference in Boston around early/mid-October that focuses on the area of research that Jason’s group is working on. In between, there’s the mandated week-long October holiday in China, which we’ll be spending in the U.S. The entire Wu family will be in the Bay Area that week for a family reunion. In addition, Jason was able to squeeze in another week of work doing some training at the Roche R&D center in New Jersey. All in all, that’s already 4 weeks of paid company time. So he only needed to take another week of his annual vacation to meet the 30+ days requirement!
What amazing provision!
We are looking forward to the extended time with family and friends.
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